


Red in Tooth and Claw

by circ_bamboo



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: After MAG 132, Blood and Injury, Forcing Exhausted Character to Get Some Sleep, Gen, Less than canon-typical injury, Nightmares, The Buried - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23010370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: Jon hasn't quite mastered the lack of need for sleep yet. Daisy finds him.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107
Collections: Writing Rainbow Red





	Red in Tooth and Claw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indefensibleselfindulgence](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefensibleselfindulgence/gifts).



Really, life was simply better if Jon didn't even try to sleep. When he tried, there was a wretched long moment when he thought he could do it, when he maybe if he closed his eyes, he wouldn't see the world crushing in on him on all sides, wouldn't see dirt and rock and darkness, wouldn't feel the Choke. But it always snapped to an end, and there he was, eyes wide and unseeing, and even the feel of Daisy's fingers in his own gone.

So he didn't sleep; he catalogued and recorded statements, tidied up the kitchenette, paced in circles, played endless games of solitaire, and recorded more statements. Given that he was only nominally human at this point, it wasn't absolutely necessary for him to sleep anyway, was it? And if he didn't sleep, he could record more statements and recover more quickly from the last dregs of the coma.

As little as he liked to admit it, though, the statements weren't working as well as they had in the past, and all of a sudden he was standing in the kitchenette with a pile of broken glass--two or three cups at the minimum--at his feet. The room was dark--why was it dark? Ah, because it was three-thirty in the morning and he was still at work--and he had to clean up the glass shards before anyone else came in and hurt themselves on them.

Kneeling, he started to pick up the largest pieces, but his fingers were clumsy and perhaps even a little numb. Why was that, really? The glass shards grew slick in his hand before he realized that he was bleeding all over them. There had to be a better way to do this, he thought, but he couldn't think of one, and he just threw out handful after handful of bloody glass.

A light flicked on overhead and Jon flattened himself against the cabinets, blinking rapidly to try to clear the spots from his vision. He had a handful of glass and he could probably use it as a weapon, but--

"Jon? What are you--Oh, for--" 

He knew that voice; it was there in his nightmares sometimes. A name came into focus: Daisy. Right. She was kneeling in front of him, holding out a dishrag. "How about you put that down before you shred your hands any more than they already are," she said, and it wasn't a suggestion.

Jon had to concentrate for more than a few seconds to get his fingers to unlock, and once he did, he realized he could feel pain from the slices in his palm. "Oh," he said, more than a little distant.

"Yeah, _oh_ ," Daisy said.

An instant later, he was sitting in a chair while Daisy used a pair of tweezers to pull tiny bits of glass out of his fingers, and, well, he'd certainly felt worse pain. There wasn't going to be an inch of skin left on his hands that wasn't scarred, he thought.

"No, probably not," Daisy said.

Ah. He'd said that out loud. Oh well.

When she finished, she dragged him over to the sink and made him wash his hands twice, until--well, at one point he would have said that his hands felt as if they were on fire, but he knew what that felt like, and this pain was different. Quite a bit different. Still, however, his nerves were screaming and it was awful.

"Are you even tracking?" Daisy said.

"What are you doing here?" he asked instead of answering her.

"Didn't go home."

Ah. That . . . meant something, but he couldn't think of what.

"You didn't go home, either, so I figured I could stay not too far from you. And then I take one minute to go to the loo and then all of a sudden you're cleaning up glass with your bare hands. When's the last time you slept?"

"I don't--I'm not sure I--"

"Yeah. That's what I thought. Come on."

"Where are we going?" Jon thought to ask, once they were outside and a few blocks from the Institute. The air was crisp, but somehow it made him feel more tired, not less.

"You'll find out when we get there," Daisy said, not letting go of his elbow.

Before too long--not even a subway ride later--they were standing in front of a building that Jon had never seen before. He didn't exactly have an encyclopedic knowledge of London apartment buildings, but he did think he had some idea where the rest of his staff lived, and this was definitely not where Daisy lived. Or, at least, it wasn't where she'd lived before. "Safehouse," she said as she hit a code and led him inside.

"Well, then," he said.

The apartment, little more than a couple of rooms with almost nothing in the way of furniture, did have a series of very sturdy locks, and Daisy locked all of them before turning to Jon. "Strip," she said.

"I would really rather not," Jon said.

Even though she hadn't turned on the overhead light, he could see her roll her eyes. "You're covered in blood. I doubt you want to sleep in a bloody jumper."

Was he? Ah.

"There's a sink in there. Can you clean yourself up without falling in?"

He looked at his hands. "Likely not."

"All right."

In some ways, it was a blessing that the next fifteen minutes were hazy, as Daisy was no nurse and Jon was historically the worst patient on record. But at the end, he was in a set of flannel pajamas that were a little oversized; his hands were bandaged, and he was more or less clean. Daisy dragged him into the other room, which turned out to be a bedroom of sorts, the kind with a mattress on the floor and a sleeping bag or two atop it. "You're going to sleep," Daisy said.

"I would really rather not," Jon said again. "Shouldn't you be with Basira?" That was it, that was what he had forgotten earlier.

"She snores," Daisy said. "You do, too, but it's quieter."

"I don't snore," he said, affronted.

"You do." It was final. "But you're going to sleep now."

"Or what? Or you'll Hunt me?"

"No." Her tone was short, and he thought about apologizing, but she went on. "Or you'll hurt yourself again, and worse, you'll hurt other people. Sleep."

"I--but--"

"You think I don't have the same nightmares?" It was almost a hiss. "I'm on watch. You sleep. Tomorrow, you can do the same for me."

"Ah." He wanted to argue so very much, but he found he couldn't. "I--"

"Jon."

"I'll try," he said eventually, the words dragged out of him.

"All I can ask." She sank to the floor with some sort of tablet and stared at him until he lay down on the mattress and pulled a sleeping bag over himself.

Maybe this would be the time he could sleep. Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this is somewhere in the family of what you wanted!


End file.
